John Whalen

Cohort 1

April 2025

Cohort 2

June 2025

July 2025

May 2025

We conducted a head-to-head test of humans and AI-tools each performing research tasks such as designing studies, moderating interviews, analyzing results, and creating deliverables. We then had expert researchers blindly evaluate the output from AI and humans to learn when AI tools performed well, and when humans are indispensable. Download a 1-page brief summarizing our findings to find out when AI tools were most valuable!

AI vs Humans - A User Research Showdown

A hands-on course to teach you how to use cutting-edge AI tools and make your research faster, better, and more impactful.

John Whalen, PhD

AI for Customer Research: Future-Proof Your UX & Product Skills

Senior Researcher

User Research Consultant

UX Researcher

Senior Manager, UX Research

Product Researcher

As a UX researcher, you know that real insights come from empathy, deep observation, and critical thinking. Yet today's market demands you work smarter—and AI is playing a leading role in top research teams. This course is designed for researchers, whether in-house or freelance, who want to integrate AI into their workflow without sacrificing the uniquely human insights that set you apart. In this immersive, interactive course, discover how AI is revolutionizing research by delivering rapid insights, unprecedented scale, and innovative techniques like synthetic users. You'll be introduced to groundbreaking tools while mastering practical prompt engineering that you can use immediately. WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT A Clear, Step-by-Step Roadmap• Learn how to harness AI tools to streamline your entire research process—reducing repetitive tasks so you can focus on deep analysis and creativity. Practical, Hands-On Experience• Try the latest AI tools for research such as: AI-powered interview moderation, AI-powered analysis, and synthetic user, – first through guided group demonstration, then through structured homework.• Discover actionable techniques (like meta-prompting — advanced ways to structure your AI queries) that transform AI into your most trusted research ally. Overcome Tool Overwhelm• Cut through the noise of dozens of new tools and approaches. We’ve curated the most effective ones so you won’t feel overwhelmed by information overload or tool fatigue.•&nbsp;Access enterprise-grade AI platforms not typically available, and hear directly from the founders who will share their visionary insights for the future of research. Community &amp; Support• Enroll and gain access to an exclusive network of experienced professionals. Enjoy live support, collaborative discussions, and a safe space to ask questions as you master new skills. WHY IT MATTERS ⚡ Accelerate Your Research Time: Slash research time while maintaining quality and depth. We've reduced our research time at Brilliant by 85% and I'll share how! 📈 Future-Proof Your Career: Equip yourself with skills that ensure you stay ahead in an ever-evolving market, making you indispensable. Become the orchestrator of your AI-enhance research system. WHAT MAKES THIS CLASS UNIQUE 🔓 Exclusive Access &amp; Expert Guest Speakers: Enjoy trial access to exclusive, enterprise-grade AI platforms that aren’t always available publicly, and live guest sessions with the visionary founders of these tools. In April's cohort alone, you'll gain access to: Wondering, Listen Labs, Quallie, Coloop, Marvin, Vurvey and Synthetic Users. Founders will demonstrate their tools, provide research best practices, and share their insights into the future of research. 🌟 Balanced Exposure to Specialized tools and Prompt Engineering for any LLM: While you’ll explore new AI tools, you’ll also learn prompt engineering techniques that yield immediate, tangible benefits – great for professionals working with sensitive data and limited access to AI tools. 🤝 Collaborative, Hands-On Learning: Participate in live workshops that combine expert guidance, interactive practice, and peer collaboration to solve real-world research challenges. Get your hands on these tools and discuss the experience with your peers. COURSE FORMAT﻿⏰ Live Workshops: Four engaging 120-minute sessions per week featuring live demos, group activities, special guests and interactive discussions. Note: We do each session twice for your convenience. Once at 1-3pm EST and once 7-9pm EST – attend whichever you like! This is not only convenient but also makes the student-to-teacher ratios excellent for learning and individual attention. 💻 Practical Application: One hour per class of homework between sessions applying AI tools in real-world research scenarios. ❓ Weekly Q&amp;A Sessions: Live sessions for personalized support, immediate feedback, and extra guidance. 🎥 Recorded Sessions: Access all session recordings to revisit and solidify your learning at your own pace.

Future-proof your career: Combine AI's power with your human empathy

Provide a brief description for each module as a way to sell the value of what students will be learning throughout the course.

First Module

Second Module

Third Module

Course syllabus

Interactive workshop: Learn new concepts and get set up to conduct hands-on training with AI-powered research tools. Workshops are being run identically in the afternoon and evening so that you can pick what works best for you!

Mondays & Thursdays

Test and master AI-powered tools for research design, recruiting, research moderation, data analysis, and reporting. Determine which tools are right for you.

Weekly projects

Optional time to meet with the session host and get 1:1 advice and support.

Office hours

Course schedule

Researchers who want faster, more effective ways to uncover insights and to learn new techniques like synthetic users.

Product Managers and Designers seeking simple and rapid product discovery and concept validation techniques they can do themselves.

Leaders and Founders looking for efficient, data-driven decisions that keep them ahead of the curve. Prepare your new research operation.

This course is for

Outcomes

Transform your workflow by dramatically speeding up data collection and analysis. Leverage AI tools to scale your research, achieving faster insights and managing global studies with ease while maintaining high quality.

Accelerate & Scale Your Research

Integrate a select few, high-impact AI tools into your existing process— advanced AI prompting, AI-powered moderation, AI-enhanced analysis or synthetic users.

Enhance Your Workflow

Future-proof your career by mastering the latest techniques such as ai-moderation and synthetic uses, making your skills irreplacable.

Stay Ahead of the Curve

Connect with a network of UX researchers who are navigating the evolving AI landscape together, sharing insights and strategies in real time.

Join a Vibrant Community

The Four Essential AI Skills for Customer Research in 2025

AI for UX Expert, Fortune 100 clientele, CEO, author & speaker

Sophisticated AI prompt engineering

Which tool to use, when to use, how to optimize, how to scale research, how to blend qual + quant.

AI-moderated qualitative research

Learn how to ask questions of your repository. Gain insights from large-scale data samples.

AI research analysis and repository research

Learn how to use synthetic customers and researchers and designers to develop a multi-agent system.

How to create and use synthetic users

Demo: Agents and Synthetic Users: Customer Research’s Future

Chad Reynolds

CEO, Vurvey

Learn how to create synthetic users tailored to your needs and how to "interview" them and generate insights.

Generate realistic AI-powered users

Use synthetic users to validate concepts before costly real-world testing. Anticipate what real customers might say.

Test ideas with AI-driven personas

Leverage AI for instant expert feedback in your domain. Create an expert partner in insights, branding, marketing, etc.!

Explore synthetic experts as research partners

While I'll show more advanced and specialized tools too, I'll provide LLM prompts to get you started during our meeting.

Try them for yourself while I'm presenting

Demo: Analyzing Customer Interviews in Minutes with AI

Jack Bowen

CEO, Coloop AI

Learn how prompting can turn hours of interviews into actionable reports.  I'll share prompts and interviews.

Use the LLM you have today for instant session summaries

Sounds less interesting, but a huge time saver! See how AI can structure findings into useful tables and charts.

Automatically build data tables for analysis

Uncover insights you might have missed. See how specialized tools can give you super-human insight-finding strength.

Interrogate your research data with AI

AI-moderated customer interviews

AI analysis of research

How to partner with synthetic users

Live Demo: Master LLM Prompting for Customer Research

Learn to instruct AI to make prompts that are easily custom tailored to every step in your research process.

Make Custom Prompts for Every Research Step

Discover how to develop AI-generated interview guides that are custom tailored to your strategic needs.

Create Interview Guides ... Fast!

Understand how to use AI to quickly transform raw customer feedback into actionable product discovery insights.

10x Your Data Analysis Speeds

Get Answers In Hours With AI-Powered Customer Interviews

Set up and conduct your first AI-moderated customer interview in under 30 minutes.

Learn How To Run Your First AI Moderated Interview

Quickly gather actionable customer insights to answer your strategic questions within hours.

Gain Insights in Hours

Watch as I create a new study live! See how AI interviews me and how it analyzes interviews for key insights.

Watch and Learn – Live demo!

Hands on with Synthetic Users: Customer Research's Future

Use synthetic users to validate concepts before costly real-world testing.  Anticipate what real customers might say.

How to Use Synthetic Users in Research and Design

Create synthetic users to animate your data and make it more compelling to stakeholders than a slide deck could ever do.

Bring Your Data to Life

Learn how synthetic users can be useful throughout your research: From kickoff to creating interview guides to analysis.

Integrate Synthetic Users into Your Workflow

Anticipate user needs by asking synthetic users.  Test concepts, marketing messages and more in a low-risk environment.

Have an Always-On Research Partner

How to Leverage AI Moderation & Analysis for Interviews

Learn how AI can moderate interviews for you – unlocking speed, scale and multilingual inclusion in your studies.

How AI can moderate interviews for you for speed and scale

Uncovers hidden insights across studies.  Bring together many interviews, surveys and studies you simply can't alone.

How to find patterns you’d never see alone

Find the places where human judgement is crucial.

John Whalen

John Whalen

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